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Smartphone Insurance Is The New Auto Insurance | Twice

It’s no secret that device dependency is here to stay. Consumers expect pretty much everything to be available via mobile device, whether it’s their preferred retailer, their bank or even their healthcare provider. Everything is optimized for mobile consumption.

This shift in expectations has positioned the mobile device as one of our most prized and vital possessions. Without our smartphones, our lives are hugely disrupted and many parts of our daily routines are inconvenienced, which makes protecting them that much more important.

With this in mind, smartphone insurance is arguably comparable to home, life or auto insurance these days: it’s a requirement. According to a recent global survey from B2X, one in three US mobile users purchase insurance for their phones, and with the increasing technological advances (and prices) for phones, that statistic will only grow.

Ericsson predicts there will be a whopping 6 billion active smartphone worldwide by 2020 with about 10 percent of them requiring repairs at some point during their digital lifecycle. That is 600 million potential device repairs that need to be executed for those connection-hungry device users. Are they all going to want to pay out of pocket for that expensive care? Probably not.

This reliance on our devices has led to an estimated 10 percent increase in the mobile phone insurance market by 2020, accounting for nearly $50 billion dollars in revenue for the insurance sector. Needless to say, this opportunity is one not to be missed by insurance providers, and they know it.

In an effort to better connect with their end users, insurance providers are listening to consumers and are no longer just accessible via a help hotline or in person. They have leaned into our mobilized way of life via comprehensive apps with a consumer’s needs all in one place. Embracing the expanding trend of self-service is crucial for insurance providers to remain competitive and relevant and, of course, keeping their mobile-savvy customers happy.

The budding relationships between insurers and OEMs, retailers and wireless carriers is growing. Mobile insurances provide new revenue streams for OEMs and carriers/retailers with larger margins. Mobile players need to build long-lasting, strong relationships with their customers by offering a seamless after-sales support process throughout the entire lifecycle of a device, including both in-warranty and out-of-warranty issues. The whole device repair process should be one fluid motion for consumers regardless of the issue or provider. Hence insurers, OEMs, retailers and carriers need to work together to create this unified experience.

It’s no surprise that millennial influence is propelling this exponential growth in mobile device insurance. Analysts estimate that consumers born between the early 1980s and early 2000s have a combined global purchasing power of over $2.45 trillion. And what are they choosing to spend that money on? Devices that make their lives easier. Interest in houses and cars is declining but mobile device purchases are only increasing and becoming further embedded in our daily lives.

Smartphones are right up there with many life necessities in several regions. The keep us connected and enable so many crucial interactions in our daily lives. It only makes sense that we acknowledge the smartphone as another key element that should be cared for and protected, opening a huge window of possibilities for the insurance

via www.twice.com

2015 was a strong year for private equity and VC funding in the CEE region

Invest Europe, the Brussels-based non-profit that seeks to represent Europe’s private equity, VC and infrastructure sectors, today published a report (PDF) on private capital investments in Central and Eastern Europe (aka the CEE region) in 2015.

The association’s data shows that last year was a good one; to wit, private equity investment into CEE companies was clocked at the highest amount since 2009, when the financial crisis rather brutally put a stop to years of continued growth.

The total investment amount in 2015 increased 25% year-over-year to €1.6 billion, with the number of companies backed matching 2014’s record level.

Last year was also a solid one for private equity exit activity in the region as well, with a record 97 companies exiting at a total value of €1.2 billion – measured at historical investment cost. Invest Europe says that makes 2015 the third-highest year on record for exits.

Still according to Invest Europe, over 200 companies in the CEE region received venture capital investment in 2015, including nearly 130 startups.

The highest investment amounts were focused on businesses in Poland, Serbia, Hungary and Romania, comprising 85% of the region’s total investment activity by value in 2015.

via tech.eu

#Insurtech - Can Crowdfunding Work in Art Investment? | Bank Innovation

By now, crowdfunding is just another investment tool — like any other, it has its benefits and disadvantages as a source of capital.

But the concept of allowing for individual investors of all experience levels has proven its worth, especially as fintech integrates with other industries: like the art world, for instance, through startups like Arthena.

Put simply, Arthena allows individuals to invest in art via crowdfunding.

“Arthena is the first product of its kind; the art fund industry is in its infancy, and has great potential for growth” said Arthena Founder and CEO Madelaine D’Angelo, adding that art investment is effective tool for balancing risk and diversifying an individual investor’s portfolio. “Having a platform like Arthena allows us to democratize investments and appeal to a younger class of investors who want to play an active role in investing their portfolio.”

According to Arthena, the art market has been growing year over year 7% worldwide, and 25% per annum in the US. Currently, $1 trillion of art assets is estimated to be owned by high-net-worth individuals, the company said.

Begun in 2013 by D’Angelo, who worked as a former art appraiser and consultant before founding Arthena, the platform is said to offer a more steady investment than commodities like oil, for example.

Traditional art funds rely on advisers to purchase art for investment, while Arthena takes a quantitative approach by selling funds to individuals with a minimum investment of $10,000 through the platform. This is much like how, say, Prosper makes available pools of loans for investment by individuals.

Arthena also allows private wealth managers and institutions to sell investments in Arthena to their clients, as long as the wealth manager or institution commits to a minimum buy in of $100,000. Arthena appears to work on an institution level because investors can see what works were acquired and what is their current valuation, as well as see the total amount of investment in art.

“We’re giving people a chance to invest in what is traditionally the market with the highest barrier to entry, and the strongest historical returns,” said D’Angelo, who noted that currently, the art market is doing phenomenally well —and has been doing phenomenally well for years, even through the 2008 financial crises, where it rebounded faster than any other market.

To learn more about crowdfunding and other fintech trends, join us at Bank Innovation Israel, November 1-3. Register here. 

via bankinnovation.net

An Interview With Anne-Cécile Worms, Expert For Digital Art And Founder Of @Art2M

An Interview With Anne-Cécile Worms, Expert For Digital Art And Founder Of Art2M 

According to the Worldwide Collectors Survey carried out by AXA ART, 14% of the collectors focus  on artworks linked to new media. In October 2015, AXA ART invested € 500.000 Euro in ART2M (Art to Machine): a start-up specialized in mediating between investors passionate about digital art und innovative artists who produce connected objects. The company is on the cutting edge of digital fabrication through its platform makery.info. With a network of nearly 600 labs worldwide it identifies artists, makers and designers to work with. Contemporary artists are presented on the selling platform ArtJaws, selected by curators from all over the world specialized in digital art. Anne-Cécile Worms on the background of her work and the rising interest in digital art.

 

What does Art2M stand for? Which motives did you have when founding your first startup in 2009?

It has been thirteen years of engaging with digital art, before founding the startup. I have been publishing the first French printed magazine about digital art (MCD, Magazine des Cultures Digitales). I was thus able to establish close relationships with artists and producers of digital artwork. From the very beginning, it was the aim of Art2M to create a platform for yet underrepresented artists. That way, we hope to facilitate the access to digital art for an audience that is interested in it.

You are running three different websites. There are Art2M, makery.info and ArtJaws. How do you differentiate between them?

Art2M is a company specialized in the production and the distribution of exclusive digital artworks and innovative design. Our expertise is based on our international network of artists, designers and engineers, with whom we work since 2009 to create installations and events bound to the art and to the new technologies. Art2M is currently producing innovative artworks for public spaces, as well as connected objects and events for its clients.

Together with artists, Art2M is producing exclusive artworks, such as WaterLight Graffiti™ by Antonin Fourneau, a new a material made of thousands of LEDs which lights up when touched by water, or The Infinite Book™ by Albertine Meunier, an entirely blank book which content appears only when its pages are turned.

The online media, Makery.info is our tool to scout innovation worldwide and connect with inventors and developers working in the field of digital fabrication via so called “fablabs”. The interchange of information can therefore happen on a global scale. It gives us the chance to have a constant overview of current developments in the field of connected objects.  Besides, we are able to find new sources of inspiration for collaborations, prototyping and coproductions.

ArtJaws is a new marketplace targeting the international online art market, offering buyers direct accedd to artworks and artists who are icons of pop culture and digital arts. ArtJaws is making accessible to a wider public, artworks that are rarely seen in traditional distribution channels, featuring limited editions and world exclusives from international artists.

“Jaws” has its origins in the surf community: it stands for a very famous Hawaiian spot where the jawlike waves can reach up to 25 meters high. ArtJaws stands for the new wave of innovative art.

Which criteria is important for you when selecting works for ArtJaws?

A committee of well-esteemed curators are being invited from all over the world. I have been able to establish an outstanding team of curators because of my longstanding experience within the area of the digital art. At the moment, there are five curators working for ArtJaws. However, this number will rise up to twenty within the coming months.

ArtJaws curates collections that introduce viewers to artists who have been little or under-represented in the current art market—artists who are part of the parallel history of art and who are creating the tools and languages of the future, thanks to whom will emerge a new grammar for art that is new to collectors but ancient in its journey.

How diverse is the range of artworks offered at ArtJaws?

Just as for an exhibition, artworks are selected according to specific themes, through focused and demanding curation founded on double expertise.  Artworks are presented in historical and artistic perspective. Each piece is accompanied by a wealth of in-depth documents to engage buyers through an artist biography, interview, collectors’ comments, with the artwork in focus, in perspective and in context.  We have already launched 6 collections: Tattoo Art, Graffiti Art and Digital Art. The collector will also be able to discover the diversity of digital art. It is time to move on from the expectation that digital art can only happen on a screen. There are many more things to digital art. Post-internet art, bio-art, robotic art, or connected objects are a great example for this.

Can you explain this further?

The influence of the internet on art is important here. Objects can communicate with each other. A work by Albertine Meunier, the DADAPrint3r, which is produced by Art2M and exhibited on ArtJaws, exemplifies this very well: The internet plays an intrinsic role when it comes to Meunier´s work. Her printer can produce a text in Paris made up of words spoken in Marseille or any other place in the world through a mobile app. Based on Google voice recognition technology, all speech captured by the microphone is optimally and efficiently processed. However, occasional moments of uncertainty may yield surprising results.  A notion of phantasy is added and its aspects of unconsciousness add elements of Dada to Meunier´s art.

DadaPrint3r, Ready Made by Albertine Meunier, coproduction Art2M

How do you explain the success of ArtJaws?

The online art market experiences a growing success – the turnover in 2015 was three billion dollars. 2020 is expected to have a turnover of ten billion dollars. There are very few websites that have a similar target group like we do. The platform really is about the latest developments within the field of contemporary digital art. Because we are up-to-date with the most recent happenings in the history of art, ArtJaws is able to offer something very special. It is our most crucial distinctive feature: Most artworks that can be found on ArtJaws cannot be found on any other website. Since its inauguration, ArtJaws achieved sales of 100.000 Euros of online sales.

You don´t work in the sense of a traditional gallery. How would you describe your relationships with the artists?

Instead of negotiating contracts with galleries or agencies, we are in direct contact with the artists. 70 per cent of our revenue is paid to the artist when he´s represented by a gallery or an agent, 50 per cent when he´s not represented. We also work with artists to produce new artworks for our ArtJaws exclusive collectors.

Why would the acquisition of artworks via ArtJaws be appealing to collectors?

ArtJaws is giving collectors and investors the opportunity to acquire works by artists whose reputation is on the rise. ArtJaws is convinced that the artworks it presents will increase in value over the next five years because of the network of curators of outstanding knowledge and experience we´ve generated. Collectors who acquired works via ArtJaws have confirmed this – it is rare for them to find a similar access. If a collector wants to buy an oil painting with a video projection screened on its surface, our team of experts will also look for this work.  We are thus able to foster a very personal and exclusive relationship with our clients. Besides, we offer the collectors to be in direct contact with the artists and to visit their studios. Our aim is not to divide the “online world” from the “offline world”. Today, both fields are merging.

What about collectors who are interested in digital art but don´t know much about it yet?

We show artworks and we provide information about artists. As a partner of AICA (International Association of Art Critics), ArtJaws give collectors access to content designed to help them building their collection. AICA is providing editorial content to ArtJaws with contributions from the most renowned international art critics. That way, collectors that had little chance to inform themselves on digital art before, will better understand what digital art is about. It is not about whether the works are digital or not. What counts more is the fact that these works have to be looked at as art. We want the collectors to understand that we don´t care so much about the technological aspects. We care much more about the emotional strength of a work and its meaning. This is what moves the collector.

ubi i/o alumni Evercontact is joining One More Company! - ubi i/o

15 hours ago by ubi i/o team in fromtheblog 0 1

The ubi i/o team is excited to share with you an awesome piece of news we received today from one of our 2015 alumni: Evercontact is being acquired by One More Company (maker of Senders).

It’s a real success story for the Paris-based contact syncing startup, Evercontact, who arrived in the U.S. 1.5 years ago, right after raising $1M with AXA Strategic Ventures, to take part in the 2015 edition of ubi i/o with the dream of conquering the world.

The ubi i/o program allowed Evercontact to be totally immersed in the Silicon Valley ecosystem. Week after week Philippe Laval, CEO at Evercontact, was getting better and better on his pitch and that’s how he won the World Cup Tech Challenge right after being featured on one of Guy Kawasaki‘s webinars. After the 10-week program, Evercontact decid

via www.ubi-io.com

#ContactManagement #EmailIntelligence - One More Company investit dans l'e-mail intelligence, Actu - Les Echos Business

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  One More Company investit dans l'e-mail intelligence

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La start-up fondée par des Français et spécialisée B to B vient de racheter Evercontact.Son objectif : devancer Google.

Mettre de l'ordre dans ses contacts. En cette période de rentrée, c'est le genre de bonnes résolutions que pourrait rendre possible One More Company. La start-up fondée il y a un an à New York par des Français vient de racheter Evercontact pour un montant non divulgué. La pépite parisienne, créée en 2009 et soutenue à l'époque par Xavier Niel et Jérémie Berrebi notamment, permet de tenir à jour ses contacts via les informations piochées et triées dans les e-mails. One More Company propose deux services aux entreprises, Sende.rs et Trackbuster, qui logent une mini-carte de visite virtuelle en pied de message. Une carte qui reprend les informations relatives à l'expéditeur comme son nombre de followers Twitter ou celui de ses contacts LinkedIn. Un moyen d'évaluer en un clin d'oeil son importance et le degré d'urgence à apporter au message.

Les utilisateurs sont multiples et principalement BtoB, comme Disney, Orange ou BuzzFeed. Ils l'utilisent pour mettre à jour leurs bases clients, notamment dans leurs services commerciaux, marketing et communication. De son côté, One More Company aide les entreprises à recruter en accélérant le scan des milliers de CV reçus. Mais aussi en leur permettant de trier les messages reçus sur le service client.

via business.lesechos.fr

#Insurtech #ContactManagement - One More Company Acquires Evercontact for Cash and Stock

NEW YORK and PARIS, Aug. 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- One More Company, the 13-month young company which has launched Senders and Trackbuster, has acquired Paris-based contact syncing innovator Evercontact. As part of the transaction, One More Company received new investments from AXAStrategic Ventures and Aurinvest.

 

 

Terms of the transaction and investments were not disclosed.

"Adding Evercontact's technical team, customers, and assets to what we already are building is an opportunistic acquisition for us so early on," said Florian Seroussi, Co-founder, and CEO of New York City-based One More Company. "Evercontact will remain a standalone service. As a result of the acquisition, it will rapidly boost the growth of our flagship service Senders as we leverage the strengths of the combined customer base. With the additional experience and depth being added to our technical and sales teams, we can now build out more strategic partnerships and put greater efforts behind B2B sales efforts, both in Europe and North America, far sooner than anticipated."

Combined, Evercontact, Senders and Trackbuster products will now have 100,000 active users, with over 300,000 installations combined as of July 31, 2016. Together the three services process 3.5 million emails per day and manage the information of over four million contacts, all on a real-time, up-to-date basis. The companies also have five patents issued or pending in the US and worldwide, along with various trademarks and other intellectual property developed over the past eight years.

"The addition of Evercontact's intellectual property, customers and technical team, means executing on our vision sooner, by enriching the level of expertise that is working day-to-day on our mobile-oriented email-intelligence and information-management solutions that improve the lives of businesses and consumers," Seroussi added.

As a mobile-first, technology-based startup, the acquisition increases One More Company's technology team to eleven computer science Ph.D's, with 4 holding degrees in Natural Language Processing from leading universities.

"Combining the knowledge and skill set of Evercontact, with One More Company's very seasoned technology and management teams, enables us to move more deeply into the growing network information management sector that we're tackling," said Seroussi. "The Evercontact acquisition also allows us to scale more rapidly. Their staff complements the existing team's experience across multiple disciplines that span natural language processing, email parsing and processing, building a network graph, data privacy, security, and information management that were previously at market leaders Google, Twitter, IBM and Facebook."

Senders is the only integrated solution that works flawlessly on mobile. Recent reports show that a majority of email Is opened on a smartphone or tablet. 86% of emails in Q1 2016 were opened on a mobile device, according to EmalMonday, a leading online authority on the subject which highlighted "The Kahuna Mobile Marketing Index" for Q1 2016. 

"Unlike the acqui-hires that have been occurring in the early stage startup world, the acquisition of Evercontact was about more than just adding their experienced technical team," said Seroussi. "Equally important was the company's intellectual property and battle-tested technology, a feature set that is very complimentary to both Senders and Trackbuster; and the enterprise-focused customer base. Taken together, it's a natural fit that allows us to grow faster and serve businesses and individual users better."

With the acquisition, the combined company will operate out of its New York headquarters opposite the Empire State Building, while having the Paris office serve as its European hub.

"We have seen what the One More Company team has done with Senders and Trackbuster, and also marveled at the ingenuity of the Evercontact team over the years," said Minh Tran, General Partner at Axa Strategic Ventures. "With the two companies joining, we see the combined talents driving innovation and rapid growth surrounding network information management."

Geoffroy Bragadir, Managing Partner at Aurinvest added, "as one of One More Company's earliest investors it's great to see the speed at which their team has progressed with Senders and Trackbuster. By acquiring Evercontact, another fast moving, earlier player in the sector, the company is accelerating their timetable dramatically, and far sooner than anticipated. From an early stage investor perspective, that is exactly the type of action that is needed in today's rapidly changing digital economy."

About Evercontact

Evercontact is an email software startup bringing natural language processing to email and contact management. Based in San Francisco, CA and Paris, France, Evercontact was launched in 2014 by a team of experienced developers and linguistic engineers.

Evercontact is an auto-updating address book for Gmail, Outlook, Office 365, Salesforce and more. The service automatically updates contact information based on user emails. 

About One More Company, Inc.

One More Company, Inc. is a U.S. corporation headquartered in New York City and founded by seasoned executives with decades of experience in Silicon Valley, at places like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and IBM. It has offices in New York and Paris. 

Senders is the latest product from One More Company. It functions like Caller ID for email by providing the recipient more information about the sender right in the email, so it works everywhere, regardless of app, platform, and device. Senders™ is a patent-pending service designed and securely hosted in the US.

Contact:

Andy Abramson
Comunicano
Email
+1.858.777.9777 (USA)
+33 970 405 441 (France)

Or

Danielle Prager
Comunicano
Email
+1.858.256.6344 (USA)

SOURCE One More Company, Inc.

 

via www.prnewswire.com

#ContactManagement #Insurtech #EmailIntelligence - French email startup Evercontact acquired by One More Company

Paris-based email management software startup Evercontact has been acquired by US firm One More Company, which has also received an investment from AXA Strategic Ventures and Aurinvest.

The companies declined to disclose any figures on the acquisition or investment.

Under the deal, Evercontact will continue as a standalone service but will help One More Company in its plans to scale with the addition of its technical team and its patents, said One More Company CEO and cofounder Florian Seroussi.

One More Company, which launched just over a year ago, is also behind email ID and tracking services Sende.rs and Trackbuster.

Together the three products will have 100,000 active users and process an average of 3.5 million emails a day. New York will remain One More Company’s headquarters with Evercontact’s Paris office serving as its European base.

“The addition of Evercontact’s intellectual property, customers and technical team, means executing on our vision sooner, by enriching the level of expertise that is working day-to-day on our mobile-oriented email-intelligence and information-management solutions that improve the lives of businesses and consumers,” said Seroussi.

“By acquiring Evercontact, another fast moving, earlier player in the sector, the company is accelerating their timetable dramatically, and far sooner than anticipated,” said Geoffroy Bragadir, managing partner at Aurinvest.

via tech.eu

#ContactManagement #Insurtech - One More Company rachète Evercontact pour passer un cap dans la business intelligence | FrenchWeb.fr

One More Company, start-up qui édite les solutions Sende.rs et Trackbuster et fondée par des Français, annonce le rachat de son concurrent Evercontact. Soutenue par un financement de 2 millions d'euros de la part d'Axa Strategic Ventures et du fonds Aurinvest, cette acquisition a été réalisée «en cash et en stock». Le montant de l'opération n'est pas précisé.

Lancée en 2009 par Philippe Laval, Evercontact permet de mettre à jour automatiquement les informations de son carnet d'adresses. La solution se voyait comme un «Waze des contacts professionnels». Elle comptait d'ailleurs aussi à son board des actionnaires français, à nouveau le fonds d'Axa, Xavier Niel ou encore Jérémie Berrebi via Kima Ventures. Ce rachat permet donc de rapprocher les deux entités.

Lancement de verticales B2B

«Evercontact se trouvait dans une phase de stagnation», indique à Frenchweb Florian Seroussi, (en photo de une) co-fondateur de One More Company. En rachetant Evercontact, One More Company compte ainsi «grossir sa base de data intelligence», précise-t-il. Ses deux services, Sende.rs et Trackbuster, qui proposent à l'utilisateur et aux marques de gérer l'information contextuelle de ses emails, vont reprendre sept ingénieurs d'Evercontact dans la cellule de développement à Paris.

«La propriété intellectuelle de l’entreprise (Evercontact) et la ténacité des solutions techniques sont aussi importants car il s’agit d’un ensemble de fonctionnalités complémentaires à Sende.rs et Trackbuster; et à la base de clients sur laquelle l’entreprise se concentre. Le produit Evercontact restera autonome», ajoute la société basée à New York.

Fondée en 2015, One More Company est accompagnée depuis son lancement par deux fonds français dont Kernel, mais aussi par des investisseurs privés tels Jean-David Blanc ou Bleu Capital. Pour l'heure, ses deux services sont entièrement gratuits. «Nous allons bientôt sortir une version premium avec des informations en fonction des besoins des clients, comme pour les DRH, avec des 'senders card', pour les candidats à l'emploi, ou pour gérer l'information textuelle des clients dans les entreprises afin qu'elle puisse aménager la priorité», avance Florian Seroussi.

Les deux sociétés, qui revendiquent 100 000 utilisateurs actifs après ce rachat, veulent s'attaquer aux leaders sur le marché de la business intelligence. Rachetée en 2012 par LinkedIn, Rapportive est bien placée pour séduire les contacts professionnels. Elles devront aussi affronter FullContact qui a levé 25 millions de dollars en 2016, mais aussi Plaxo aux États-Unis.

Evercontact emploie 15 personnes à Paris et à San Francisco. 

Lire aussi: Trackbuster, la start-up qui veut neutraliser le « tracking » d’e-mails

via www.frenchweb.fr

#Insurtech - Le financement des fintech par le capital-risque décroche au deuxième trimestre - Actualités Fintech

Dans son rapport, KPMG constate une chute de 49% du financement par le capital-risque des technologies financières au deuxième trimestre. Toutefois les InsurTech prennent leur essor en 2016.

Dossiers liés

Les fintech s'installent dans le paysage financier

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via www.agefi.fr

In 2016 there was over $1 billion in VC investment into InsurTech with tremendous activity by many traditional… | BizDev Weekly

Source: KPMG.

KPMGShared publicly  –  In 2016 there was over $1 billion in VC investment into InsurTech with tremendous activity by many traditional insurers, find out why during ‘The Pulse of Fintech’ webinar on Sept 1 at 12 p.m. EST. Register here: http://bit.ly/2bPisYNKPMG and CB Insights will show you the major trends, biggest investments, and key players in Fintech over Q2 2016.Add a comment… Read More at: In 2016 there was over billion in VC investment into InsurTech with tremendous activity by many traditional…

via bizdevweekly.com

Who Knew That R2D2 Could Sell Insurance?

Man versus Machine

With the much-anticipated trailer for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” launched just over a week ago, there is no doubt that our fascination with “Man versus Machine” is alive and well. Think about the early caveman, 2 million years ago, chipping away at a rock, which would eventually become an axe. How did others receive his new “machine?” Or, how about when the cotton gin appeared? Some say that Eli Whitney’s invention actually prolonged slavery.

Whatever your stance on the debate over the need for new machines and how they replace or enhance the human element, there is no doubt that machines continue to change the business landscape and how people participate in the process.

The machine of modern times is the computer. And, the same questions of how they might replace humans still creep up. The significant difference in today’s world is how computers have moved from the workplace into the living room and now even into the hand. We look to computers as our tool to find restaurants, shopping deals, cars, stock advice, and more, but will consumers allow computers to sell them life insurance? Will Jake at State Farm or Flo at Progressive be replaced? Evia (Expert Virtual Insurance Agent) is lurking in the wings to do just that.

Snejina Zacharia, CEO of Insurify, just launched the first shot across the bow of the insurance world. She does not run an insurance company; her company assists consumers in sorting out all their available insurance options. CNET deems her company, “…the Travelocity for auto insurance.” You can take a photo of your license plate and text it to Evia, who will shoot you some questions and then analyze the 80+ insurance carriers’ plans to match you with what it perceives as the best one for your money. The goal is to obviously replace the traditional insura

via www.forbes.com

The “Uber of Insurance” is here | LifeHealthPro

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Here are two words you don’t often hear in the same sentence: revolutionary and insurance.  

But that’s exactly what experts are calling a new peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance concept presented by startup Lemonade. Though the company has yet to open its doors, the adjective-laden praise has commenced. Bankrate muses that Lemonade may become the “the Uber of insurance” and Sequoia Capital’s Haim Sadger says his firm’s investment in the company was a no-brainer because “we’re betting that Lemonade will transform the insurance landscape beyond recognition.” Heady words from a venture capital firm that helped launch one-time startups Apple, Google and LinkedIn.

Lemonade recently secured $13 million from Sequoia and others in seed funding, which may not seem like much in the mega-billion dollar insurance industry. However, here’s some perspective: Uber’s initial round of funding garnered just $200,000, and the top seed investment amount in 2014 was $10 million for an analytics business named Kensho. Now you can see why many are calling Lemonade the next big thing.  

The Bankrate article points out that a P2P insurance model usually involves a small group of policyholders who

via www.lifehealthpro.com

Why Blockchain Could Enable a True P2P Insurance Model - CoinDesk

There is a shift going on in the financial sector.

The steep rise of the FinTech industry, where investments went up eightfold in the past 5 years to almost $20bn is causing unrest within traditional companies. One of the most interesting developments in the FinTech industry is without a doubt blockchain.

There are already many examples of how blockchain could impact the banking industry, especially payments services and security and commodity trading. In the insurance industry it is Internet of Things, big data and crowdfunding that are widely described.

Perhaps because of this, the impact of blockchain on the insurance industry hasn't been a strong point of focus for new innovators. Some papers, like the Ethereum white paper and “Chain of a lifetime” do describe examples of new products that could result from blockchain technology, but these focus less on new possible business models.

But that's not to say there's no conversation on this topic. A report from the Dutch National Bank of March 2016 put sustainable future business models within the insurance branch on deep red. The urgency for new business models is high, although it looks like the sense of urgency is not always present within the traditional insurance companies.

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There, the focus is more on incremental change of the current model instead of disruptive change or even green field set up of a new model.

Benefits to gain

So, what could be a new model and how could this model be executed? Blockchain, especially smart contracts, could be the enabler for a true P2P or crowdfunded insurance model.

In the new business model, the focus of the insurers would shift away from asset management and instead would focus on matching supply and demand and to risk calculation research. The insurer would provide a marketplace-like platform where customers can post their insurance demand, which could be either a standardized product or even a specific demand.

The insurer then would use its "risk intelligence" and risk models, based on their historical data, to perform a premium calculation to post the expected return, after subtracting their margin off course.

Posting this premium calculation, interested investors can bid or subscribe to the demanded insurance. This can either be done as a group through crowdfunding, or by individuals in a P2P way. This could depend on the kind of insurance request, the available resources of the investor and his or her risk appetite.

So far, this model looks much like the one Lloyd's already has in the insurance market or the ones companies like Funding Circle have set up in the P2P lending market.

And here is where blockchain will play a vital role.

Besides the administration being done in a decentralized ledger, with the use of smart contracts, one could guarantee the payment from the investor to the customer in case the event for which the customer posted their insurance demand happens. The smart contract is thus programmed as a traditional guarantee, but without the need of a bank.

By doing this in a blockchain, the administration and execution processes are simpler, almost fully automated, transparent and cheaper than in a traditional set up. Besides that, the invest

via www.coindesk.com

3 Key-Takeaways on Insurtech from the Event “InsurTech – The next big thing?!?!” – Insurtech Talk

This Meetup provided insides from the leading Digital Broker CLARK, Allianz Digital Accelerator and Commerz Ventures. I had a lot of talks bevor and after the event, so let me share my top three key-takeaways with you.

The Event

Few weeks ago I attended the Event Meetup 6: InsurTech – The next big thing?!?! at Westend Campus of Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. The Event was hosted by Felix Scheffka (@FinTechFFM) and Yassin Hankir (@YassinHankir) from the Meetup Group FinTech-in-and-around-Frankfurt.

The goal of this Meetup Group is to create a platform for those who are interested in the changes to come in the financial services industry and may like to contribute to Frankfurt’s future position as a financial services hub of the next generation.

The Line-Up

The agenda was divided in two parts. First three presentations from leading players in the Insurtech Industry:

• Steffen Glomb, CTO of CLARK gave us some insights in the ‘Tech’ of Insurtech. He focused on the rise of Robo-advisors.
• Bernd Scharrer, CEO of the Allianz Digital Accelerator gave us insights about the accelerator program of Allianz, what entrepreneurs can expect and how it fuels innovation for the Allianz Group.
• Paul Morgenthaler, Senior Investment Manager at Commerz Ventures (the fintech venture capital fund of Commerzbank) shared his views as a leading investor.

Second where three pitches from the fintech startups:

• Creditshelf presented their vision how to chance corporate lending.
• Exmedio presented how to take care of your digital profile, after your gone.
• Finotek showed possibilities in digital identification.

A lot of like minded people read on InsurtechTalk. Feel free to join and get updates and exclusive content that you cannot find on InsurtechTalk.com or somewhere else >> Join for Free

The Key-Takeaways

(1) Insurtech Brokers star

via insurtechtalk.com

#Start-up vs. #VC : mensonges, tromperies et nouvelles victimes | FrenchWeb.fr

En rentrant dans le secteur financier, je m’étais promis d’agir exactement comme je le faisais avant avec mes clients et plus généralement avec tout mon environnement économique : échanges transparents sur tous les sujets, prix de marché, exigence de profit, qualité de service au top, respect des engagements. Je ne dis pas que ce que je dis est vrai. Je dis ce que je pense, à tous, même quand ça va piquer.

C’est le genre d’attitude qui mène à une croissance durable et à une efficacité croissante, et qui permet de construire des équipes fiables et performantes. Vous êtes prévisible parce que vous suivez la stratégie et que vous êtes capables de refuser une opportunité qui ne la respecte pas, de penser plus loin que la prise reptilienne d’un avantage immédiat. On préfère alors travailler avec vous. Je crois que ça s’appelle la morale des affaires et c’est vieux comme le monde. Je n’ai en revanche aucune difficulté à rompre très vite toute relation avec ceux qui ne répondent pas aux mêmes standards.

Malheureusement, sur le marché du capital investissement, la morale des affaires est souvent encore plus faible qu’ailleurs, bien que les acteurs y soient souvent brillants. La mémoire est très courte, de la part de l’investisseur sur lequel on tape tout le temps mais aussi parfois du gentil entrepreneur que tout le monde trouve pourtant si cool.

La différence entre les VC et les start-up, c’est simplement le moment où ils commencent à mentir… Et en général, tout tourne autour de la promesse de croissance rapide, voire très très rapide.

Au début, les startupeurs ne mentent jamais, portés par une conviction extraordinaire. Le projet s’élabore, la vision du problème à résoudre est limpide. C’est plus tard qu’il pourra devenir menteur. Quand les résultats qu’il n’aura pas atteints commenceront à être visibles et que la promesse d’une croissance féerique s’estompera peu à peu.

Cela peut être encore plus pervers quand la start-up poursuit une acquisition client effrénée, qui ne sert plus qu’à masquer l’inatteignabilité des objectifs de marge.
Exemple : Je ne fais pas de marge, même si j’ai déjà levé 40 millions de dollars, que je travaille effectivement sur un service payant, avec une vraie marge brute facilement calculable… Mais j’ai encore besoin de cash pour acquérir mes nouveaux utilisateurs, et si je ne réalise pas ma levée, ma société est en danger de mort.

Là… il y a de l’eau chaude dans le mojito. On ne devrait en aucun cas se retrouver dans ce genre de situation. Et force est de constater maintenant que ce cas s’est produit plus souvent qu’on ne voudrait le reconnaître, tant en Europe qu’aux États-Unis. Dans de nombreux cas, l’hypothèse d’une marge brute sous-jacente s’est avérée insuffisante à couvrir les coûts fixes, comme Prim dans le lavage des fringues à San Francisco, et peut-être comme Take Eat Easy plus près de nous.

C’est très souvent le moment où le startupeur se met à mentir. A l’écouter, il ne lui manque plus que 10 millions d'euros pour atteindre la masse critique. Mais non… car en réalité c’est un modèle de service et la scalabilité est faible. Le startupeur peut alors adopter un discours incroyable et se transformer en fonctionnaire de La Poste. Justifiant un modèle dépassé et sous perfusion de capital externe, il ne défend plus que sa propre situation dans un système de gabegie. Le startupeur le sait, mais il ne le dit à personne. Au contraire même, il continue de produire des stats épatantes à son board, de plus en plus

via www.frenchweb.fr

Insurtech News | Interview with Minh Q. Tran, General Partner @AXAVentures

1. Describe what you do.

As a general partner in venture capital specialized in insurtech (businesses related to insurance technology), I scan EMEA for innovative startups to invest in early stages. My playground is Europe and Africa where my key motivation is to increase valuation and revenues all over European countries

 

2. Please give your definition of InsurTech.

Insurtech is any businesses related to insurance. It is composed of A. Fintech / Asset Management close to Life Insurance B. Digital Health connected to Health Insurance and Internet of Things with P&C Insurance. My scope is more software than hardware in this space  where we believe that ASV can bring smart money in driving partnership with its limited partner, AXA Group.

 

3. Startups vs. Incumbent: disruption or collaboration?

If you look at all industries from telecom to music, disruption means better opportunities for customers and negative business impact for incumbents. Hence, it makes sense to look at disruption for insurance companies and collaboration from/with startups.

 

4. Name main challenges for insurtech startups.

50% of startups in insurtech that we see want to disrupt distribution, 35% bring new products and 15% claims… However, almost all if not 100% need to partner with an insurance at some point or become an insurance company to scale.

 

5. ...and for InsurTech investors.

Spotting them at early stage to bring them to 10m revenues

 

6. When you judge an InsurTech initiative, what are you looking for?

Product/market fit, Team then business model/plan. Then we look how we can bring value over time because we are hands-on investors with the ones that deliver on plan.

 

7. One advice for InsurTech entrepreneurs.  

Follow us on @AXAVentures or @Minh_Q_Tran or @Fgraillot if you are interested scaling in Europe.

 

Minh Q. Tran is a General Partner @AXAVentures

via insurtechnews.com

Gartner's 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies Three Key Trends That Organizations Must Track to Gain Competitive Advantage

Gartner's 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies Three Key Trends That Organizations Must Track to Gain Competitive Advantage

2016 Hype Cycle Special Report Distills Insight From More Than 2,000 Technologies

The technologies on Gartner Inc.'s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2016 reveal three distinct technology trends that are poised to be of the highest priority for organizations facing rapidly accelerating digital business innovation.

Transparently immersive experiences, the perceptual smart machine age, and the platform revolution are the three overarching technology trends that profoundly create new experiences with unrivaled intelligence and offer platforms that allow organizations to connect with new business ecosystems.

The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report is the longest-running annual Gartner Hype Cycle, providing a cross-industry perspective on the technologies and trends that business strategists, chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, entrepreneurs, global market developers and emerging-technology teams should consider in developing emerging-technology portfolios.

"The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is unique among most Hype Cycles because it distills insights from more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct set of must-know emerging technologies and trends that will have the single greatest impact on an organization's strategic planning," said Mike J. Walker, research director at Gartner. "This Hype Cycle specifically focuses on the set of technologies that is showing promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years." (see Figure 1)

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2016

Source: Gartner (August 2016)

"To thrive in the digital economy, enterprise architects must continue to work with their CIOs and business leaders to proactively discover emerging technologies that will enable transformational business models for competitive advantage, maximize value through reduction of operating costs, and overcome legal and regulatory hurdles," said Mr. Walker. "This Hype Cycle provides a high-level view of important emerging trends that organizations must track, as well as the specific technologies that must be monitored."

Key Technology Trends

Transparently immersive experiences: Technology will continue to become more human-centric to the point where it will introduce transparency between people, businesses and things. This relationship will become much more entwined as the evolution of technology becomes more adaptive, contextual and fluid within the workplace, at home, and interacting with businesses and other people.

Critical technologies to be considered include 4D Printing, Brain-Computer Interface, Human Augmentation, Volumetric Displays, Affective Computing,

via www.gartner.com

Another Way to Invest With the Smart Money: SPACs | Business News

Stocks of Blackstone, Carlyle Group and other publicly traded private-equity firms aren't the only way that individual investors that don't want to fork over what it takes to buy into a partnership can participate in this part of the smart money set. In fact, legendary investor Wilbur Ross has led PE into a little-known corner of the public markets known as special-purpose acquisition companies, which raise capital through IPOs that is then put to use in M&A. Of course, you and other buyers of SPAC shares may have no idea what the PE firms will end up buying, but at least you needn't bet the farm to bet alongside them.

Over the last year, more than half of the initial public offerings and registrations tied to special-purpose acquisition plays have been led by private equity players. And while PE investors have always had a connection to this quirky corner of Wall Street, the bond has never been this pronounced.

SPACs are investment vehicles created for the purpose of bringing private companies public, raising capital for the transactions via IPOs, with the proceeds placed in a trust designated for the transaction costs. The vehicles have a specific time period, generally 18 months to 24 months in which to close a merger. Should the SPAC fail to complete a transaction, the IPO revenues are returned to investors, who also generally have the option of voting against deals that don't make their grade, and have their investments returned.

More Headlines

• Overboarded Directors at Valeant, Yahoo! and Elsewhere Struggle With Activists, M&A

• 'VW2' looms over Daimler, Volvo and others

• EC Opens Deeper Probe into Dow Mega-Deal with DuPont

via business-news.thestreet.com

#VC = 6% of deals produce 60% returns, and 50% lose money says

Source : http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/4/28/winning-and-losing#

In most jobs and most industries, if you do something that doesn't work out, that's a bad thing, and you might get fired. If you write a cover story for a newspaper that turns out to be untrue, you have a problem. If you ship a product that breaks, you have a problem.

If you do something that doesn't work out, that means you screwed up. 

Startups and startup investing don't quite work like this.

Last year Horsley Bridge (one of our LPs - investors in a16z's funds) shared some aggregate data with us on just over 7,000 investments made by funds in which it invested, from 1985 to 2014. This gives a good way of visualising the world of VC-backed startups. First, the high level:

• Around half of all investments returned less than the original investment
• 6% of deals produced at least a 10x return, and those made up 60% of total returns

Digging into the data to look at the returns of different funds, below: 

• With the exception of funds that simply flamed out (concentrated in the dotcom bubble), everyone lost money on around half of their deals
• But the best-performing funds actually had more <1x deals - more deals that lost money in absolute terms. You could call this the 'Babe Ruth effect' - you take more risks to get the best returns
• A fund gets better returns by having more really big hits, not by having fewer failures 

That concentration continues when you ask just what a '10x deal' really is - in fact, there’s no such thing. For funds with an overall return of 3-5x, which is what VC funds aim for, the overall return was 4.6x but the return of the deals that did better than 10x was actually 26.7x. For >5x funds, it was 64.3x. 

The best VC funds don’t just have more failures and more big wins - they have bigger big wins.

If you're a portfolio manager in a conventional public equities fund and you invest in a bunch of stocks that go down (or underperform the index), you could well lose your job, because your other investments can't make up for that loss. And if a public company went to zero, that would meant that a lot of people had screwed up really badly - public companies aren't ever supposed to go to zero, in the ordinary run of things. 

But venture capital funds invest in a different kind of company - they invest in a particular type of startup, one that is much more likely to go to zero, but which has the potential, if it does succeed, to produce something very big. The enormous value created by the startups that really work is possible in a way that's not really true in many other places. It's possible for a few people to take an idea and create a real company worth billions of dollars in less than a decade - to go from an idea and a few notes to Google or Facebook, or for that matter Dollar Shave Club or Nervana. It's possible for entrepreneurs to create something with huge impact. 

But equally, anything with that much potential has a high likelihood of failure - if it was obviously a good idea with no risks, everyone would be doing it. Indeed, it's inherent in really transformative ideas that they look like bad ideas - Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon all did, sometimes several times over. In hindsight the things that worked look like good ideas and the ones that failed look stupid, but sadly it's not that obvious at the time. Rather, this is how the process of invention and creation works. We try things - we try to create companies, products and ideas, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they change the world. And so, we see, in our world around half such attempts fail completely, and 5% or so go to the moon.

Clearly, not every new company or new business idea fits this model - not every startup has the potential or the risk we see here, and not every 'startup' is right for VC. Other, these are companies that sit right out at one end of the risk/reward curve, and you have to understand both the scale of the potential risk and the scale of the potential reward.

This is an interesting intellectual challenge for a VC or, more importantly, an entrepreneur: you need to ask not whether this idea will fail, let alone whether it could fail, but rather, ‘what would it be if it worked?’ You need, in a sense, to ‘suspend disbelief’ - to put aside your normal human risk-aversion and skepticism, accept the probability that it could go to zero, and ask if this could 'put a dent in the world', and if so, how big. 

Indeed, all of this applies to entrepreneurs even more than it does to VCs. Just as VCs would like only to do the deals that succeed, so would entrepreneurs. But entrepreneurs only get to do one at a time (normally). So an entrepreneur is committing years of their life to just one brilliant, terrible idea, that probably won't work, but if it does, will be enormous. And around half of those commitments fail - there are lots of risks, and lots of ways that these attempts can fail, without it being anyone's fault. If you take a normal, mature company to zero in a few years, you probably screwed up, but if a startup doesn't make it, generally that's just the risk you took. Pulling a company into reality out of thin air, through sheer force of will, isn't easy. But you're only reading this because of the entrepreneurs who took that bet. This is how invention works. 

None of this means that failure is good - failure is horrible and painful for everyone. You're not supposed to fail. Nor does it mean that doing stupid things is good, nor that screwing up is good. It certainly doesn't mean that no tech company that failed ever did something stupid or screwed up, nor that no VC has ever made an investment that they shouldn't have. People screw up in tech all the time. But failure is part of risk, and failing, by itself, does not mean that anyone was stupid, or screwed up. Failure just means you tried.